A SOCIAL worker amassed a property portfolio worth more than £500,000 while fraudulently claiming almost £40,000 in benefits over nine years.

Margaret Finnigan, 51, of Adelaide Road, Kensington worked for the city council as a social worker while claiming housing and council tax she was not entitled to.

After admitting the fraud she has been slapped with a £100,000 confiscation order and told to pay costs of £10,879.

Mrs Finnigan, who also owns a property in Victoria Road, West Kirby, Wirral admitted claiming almost £40,000 in housing and council tax benefit between 1996 and 2005 that she was not entitled to.

Last year her husband Paul, 51, was jailed for nine months for benefit fraud for illegally claiming £50,000 in income support and wrongly claiming the same housing and council tax benefit for which Mrs Finnigan has been convicted.

The jointly claimed housing and council tax benefits added up to £33,000, but when interest was added by the court it amounted to £39,000.

She now has six months to pay the £110,879 or face two years in prison.

The offences related to a property on Wallgate Road in Wavertree, where her husband and child lived, but has since been sold.

The offences came to light while she worked at the city council as a social worker during a data matching exercise designed to identify fraud.

She subsequently resigned from her position.

Her two properties – Adelaide Road and Victoria Road – had both been gifted to her daughter Sarah, but the court ruled that they still fall within the remit of the confiscation order.

Deputy council Leader Paul Brant said: “This demonstrates the hard line we will take on people who commit fraud.”